I saw this photo and immediately though, "hey, that's what it's like to be a male librarian":

Of course it's not entirely true - I always see other guys at library conferences and things (especially tech-oriented library conferences). And I know I enjoy my job as much as any princess with a balloon. But it is not at all uncommon for me to go to meetings with reference librarians in the region and be the only guy in the room.

In fact, I thought that would be a good title for my memoirs: The Only Guy in the Room.

6 Responses to “Snapshot of a Future Male Librarian”

While I am female, I find a lot of the tech meetings I have been to are attended by a mix of men and women but are mainly run by men. Interesting. Oh, I don’t drink coffee, either. It smells good, but I find it tastes like crayons strained through water.

@Alan: I’m one of four, excluding our pages and maintenance guys. But my first library job had to write their dress code to allow me to wear boy clothes, because it had been so long since they’d had a male on staff.

@Lisa: I didn’t mean that in a gender-judgement way, but I really do notice more guys around when technology is involved, so it’s good to hear it’s not just my own observation.

But wow, three non-coffee drinkers in one place. Like @Beverly, I also wonder about that association – coffee is so prevalent that I don’t really associate it with any particular group.

As a prospective librarian and current lib assistant, I only hope that this gender gap will not make it more difficult to build meaningful professional relationships, not to mention personal friendships, with (in my case female) colleagues.

@Michael: I wouldn’t worry about it – this sort of thing comes down to personality, and the fact that you’re thinking about it means you’re probably the kind of person that will have no trouble interacting with colleagues of any type. Besides, it’s a good thing to spend time around people who aren’t exactly like you, because you each bring different perspectives and experiences.